Mexican investigators on Thursday sought to identify 18 bodies found in a mass grave near Acapulco, which a YouTube video suggested could be linked to 20 men missing for over a month.
Guerrero state police director Fernando Monreal said the search was called off after sniffer dogs found no more human remains. He said that those recovered could be identified within three or four days.
News reports suggested the grave contained bodies among 20 men from the neighboring state of Michoacan who were allegedly abducted by armed men on Sept. 30 during a vacation to Acapulco.
Some of their family members traveled to Guerrero on Thursday to see if they could help with the identifications.
The families have said the men were mechanics who had saved up money to take a vacation together. Two of a total group of 22 escaped the attack.
Guerrero state prosecutor David Sotelo said an anonymous call alerted police to two bodies in the area of the mass grave.
“When police arrived, they found a message on one of them signaling the existence of a mass grave nearby,” Sotelo said on Milenio television.
An amateur video, meanwhile, appeared on the video sharing Web site YouTube, showing two men saying they killed people they called the “20 michoacanos,” and buried them in the area.
They said that they were ordered to kill the men in a revenge attack against the violent La -Familia drug gang.
The men in the video appeared to be those found dead following the anonymous tipoff, Sotelo said.
More than 30 people have died in violent attacks in the past 10 days in the latest peak in violence in and around Acapulco, a Pacific beach city famous for its wide bay and former Hollywood glamor.
In the latest attack, four traffic police were shot in the center of the port city on Thursday, police said.
An eruption of suspected drug violence has left over 28,000 people dead nationwide since the launch of a military clampdown on organized crime in 2006, according to official figures.
Reforma newspaper reported on Thursday that 10,000 people had been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico this year alone.
Mass graves have appeared more frequently in recent months, while the use of chilling video messages has also become more common.
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